The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the first three months of the year, significantly slower than first thought. The steep revision occurred mostly because consumers spent less than previously estimated, a sign that higher taxes could be dampening growth.

PressTV - US rulers fear American peopleWhat the disclosures of former CIA contractor Edward Snowden show perhaps above all else is just how petrified the leaders of the United States have become - of ordinary citizens both in the US and around the world. When we say “leaders” we mean the ruling elite - the top one percent of the financial-corporate-military-industrial complex and its bought- and paid-for politicians.

Obama has taken hypocrisy to new heights. He has destroyed US civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. In place of a government accountable to law, he has turned law into a weapon in the hands of the government. He has intimidated a free press and prosecutes whistleblowers who reveal his government’s crimes. He makes no objection when American police brutalize peacefully protesting citizens. His government intercepts and stores in National Security Agency computers every communication of every American and also the private communications of Europeans and Canadians, including the communications of the members of the governments, the better to blackmail those with secrets. Obama sends in drones or assassins to murder people in countries with which the US is not at war, and his victims on most occasions turn out to be women, children, farmers, and village elders. Obama kept Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for nearly a year assaulting his human dignity in an effort to break him and obtain a false confession. In defiance of the US Constitution, Obama denied Manning a trial for three years. On Obama’s instructions, London denies Julian Assange free passage to his political asylum in Ecuador. Assange has become a modern-day Cardinal Mindszenty. [Jozsef Mindszenty was the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church who sought refuge from Soviet oppression in the US Embassy in Budapest. Denied free passage by the Soviets, the Cardinal lived in the US Embassy for 15 years as a symbol of Soviet oppression.]

The Free Market in Action06-23-2013 • Free Press Publications Many people have never experienced an environment in which a free-market can truly exist. I, however, was lucky enough to be part of a week-long event where such an environment did exist. From June 16th – 23rd, I was in Lancaster, New Hampshire at the Free State Project’s Porcupine Freedom Festival, shortened as PorcFest. During PorcFest hundreds of people (this year saw well over 1,000 attendees) join together to meet and mingle as well as live out a freedom lovers paradise. As attendance has risen, the number of vendors at PorcFest has grown as well, thanks in part to the wider range of attendees and most importantly, the lack of government interference. Most of the vendors in the Agora Valley section of the campground were not “legitimate” businesses in the eyes of any government and many have no store outside the PorcFest event. To the best of my knowledge, no one contracted any food-borne illnesses, even with the lack of any regulation on the food vendors. All of the transactio Read Full Story

Prior to Barack Obama’s inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That’s because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now seven such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined.